Thursday, December 18, 2014

'Oak trees in a park curled up like papyrus scrolls, archaeological spoil heaps of rust, yellow and brown'

Dead leaves, yet they crackled like scrolls of power for the walking Egyptologist





As he walked back to his hotel from the British Museum, he felt a sense of exposure. Currents, people and events swirled around him like the cold London air, crowding his world.
Fallen leaves from oak trees in a park cluttered the pavement, curled up like papyrus scrolls, archaeological spoil heaps of rust, yellow and brown. For a moment, his sneakers vanished under this detritus of time and the seasons. Dead leaves, yet they crackled like scrolls of power.
The pavement narrowed, the black railings of the park pushing him closer to the street and the passing traffic, rattling black London cabs and rumbling, red double decker buses that looked as if they were about to overbalance. A gust from a passing bus scattered leaves.
What was it that drove him?
A desire to save the world?
He recalled the same question put to him by the Egyptian man and the antiquities girl.
Aren’t you afraid you’ll trigger an apocalypse?
Was it simply a hunger to feel the crackle of the numinous, to find the great source of Egypt’s power heka?
Heka was the power behind the civilisation of Egypt, behind every idol, every execration text and smashed jar, every sweating wax effigy in the flame, every stabbed, trampled and spat upon image, every prayer to a god, every amulet and love spell.
He certainly did not want power for himself, only perhaps the power that could come from knowing that such power existed, because if that power existed and could be held in his hands, then so did another power.
Where there was shadow, there had also to be the light.
Yet there could be another reason, one that he had enough honesty and self-knowledge to recognise - a hunger for acceptance, sparked by an Egyptologist father who had abandoned him as a child. It would be sweet to shake up the profession and topple their ivory tower.
Maybe a combination of all of these impulses.
In the end, though, would it be worth taking the risk?
Why did he imagine that he could encounter and experience such terrifying psychological and existential danger and remain immune to its effects?
And how did he think he was going to avoid the consequences for the region and the world that others feared?
He crossed a street and had the distinct feeling in the nape of his neck that somebody was watching him. Was he being followed?
The Egyptian? The antiquities girl?